NEW DELHI, Dec. 19 (UPI) — Hundreds of people arrested by police in India for the better part of this decade have died in custody — and yet not a single punishment has been handed out for it, a new human rights report said Monday.
According to the 114-page report by Human Rights Watch, 591 detainees died in police custody between 2010 and 2015 — many as the result of torture or other punitive actions.
Titled, “‘Bound by Brotherhood’: India’s Failure to End Killings in Police Custody,” the report details the inner workings of police forces and “examines police disregard for arrest regulations, custodial deaths from torture, and impunity for those responsible.”
Despite the hundreds of deaths, the report states, not a single police officer has ever been convicted in that five-year period. Human Rights Watch also claims that measures intended to prevent deaths in custody were routinely ignored.
Some forms of torture used by India police, the report says, include waterboarding, sexual assault and beating with a so-called “truth-seeking belt.”
“Police blame most of the deaths on suicide, illness, or natural causes. … However, in many such cases, family members allege that the deaths were the result of torture,” the report states. “While investigations were ordered … Human Rights Watch is not aware of a single case in which a police official was convicted for a custodial death.”
The HRW report details 17 different cases involving a custodial death in the five-year span and says officers used varying forms of mistreatment to extract information, punish arrestees or coerce confessions.
Last year alone, it says, most of the 97 deaths that occurred in custody escaped a judicial inquiry — and in 26 cases, no autopsy was performed. Police oversight is virtually nonexistent and attempts to reform police practices have been stalled, the HRW report claims.
“Internal departmental inquiries to examine wrongdoing rarely find police culpable,” the report says. “The police also may delay or resist filing complaints against implicated police officers.”
“The police as an organization has to decide whether shielding bad policing, illegal policing, and what amounts to murder is of value to their efficiency,” reform advocate Maja Daruwala, executive director of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, said in the report.
HRW also said its investigation found police often threatened or intimidated witnesses or family members in cases of custodial deaths.
One of the biggest problems cited in the report is the “bond of brotherhood” felt by police officers and a reluctance to turn on one another.
The report makes a number of recommendations — including strict enforcement of the detention laws already on the books, the prosecution and discipline of implicated officers, creation of a victim and witness protection law, and ratification of the Convention against Torture and incorporating it into domestic law.
“Police in India will learn that beating suspects to confess is unacceptable only after officers are prosecuted for torture,” Meenakshi Ganguly, Human Rights Watch’s south Asia director, said.
“The government and courts need to more rigorously address the willingness of police to shield those responsible,” the report concludes.
“If police accused of mistreating suspects were promptly and fairly brought to justice across India, perhaps custodial deaths from torture would cease once and for all.”
